I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He anticipates some dark repercussion.
Some consequence of the barbs on his tongue and the bristle of irritation in the network of his veins.
But, rather than cast him back out into the forest, the pegasus merely smirks and that is all it takes to drain him of whatever tension had taken up residence in his muscles. His jaw relaxes and the thin line of his mouth reorients itself into the soft slant of a smirk.
Deceivingly harmless, the pegasus says, and Bethlehem rolls his shoulders in a sort of noncommittal shrug. He rakes that ordinary gaze – nothing about Bethlehem is extraordinary, after all – through the fog that shifts and gathers around them. He supposes it’s true, though he has never felt any inclination to make himself seem anything other than harmless. He has never had reason to fight – nothing and no one worth laying his life down for. Neither a home nor a heart worth defending.
And then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the pegasus steps aside. Bethlehem considers him a long moment, his attention hinged on the other stallion’s words before the smirk deepens and he tilts his head a fraction. “Ah, I’m older than I look,” he says. And it’s true. There is immortality flowing in his veins – though none of it belongs to him, none of it will save him from his eventual demise but he likes to think that it has delayed the inevitable just enough. “Your daughter is probably significantly younger than I am.”
He moves to edge past the pegasus, to venture deeper past the boundaries of the land but he gives pause. Swallows what little pride lives in his chest. “I’ve never done this before,” he admits, his gaze shackled rather securely to a massive tree in the middle distance, “had a proper home, I mean. Is there anything I should know?”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
